At the peak of December’s ice storm, with thousands in North Texas without power and desperate for warmth, the region’s supply of seasoned firewood simply went up in smoke.

Now vendors are trying to restock as best they can, even importing firewood from Oklahoma.

“During the ice storm, we sold every stick we had,” said Shirley Thurman of Personal Touch Tree Service near White Rock Lake in Dallas.

“I’ve been here for 19 years, and this is the first time it’s been this bizarre — because of that ice storm. People were losing their heat and used their fireplaces to keep warm.”

She said she knew of two other vendors who ran out of wood and stopped making deliveries.

Andrew Grabbs of Discount Firewood in Dallas said its supply comes from local sources, and when the supply is gone, it’s gone for the year.

“We sold out faster this year than we normally do,” Grabbs said. “I think it was all gone by early November.”

Randy Davis, of Randy’s Firewood in McKinney, said he sold all the firewood he had and now searches for seasoned wood wherever he can find it, including Oklahoma.

“Sometimes it’s closer to go out of state than it is to truck it in” from some parts of Texas, Davis said. “I’ve been hauling wood in myself. You have to do what it takes to supply your customers.”

While the very cold weather and widespread power outages were major factors in the firewood shortage, Davis said warmer-than-normal temperatures over the past few winters were partially to blame, too.

“A lot of [wood] cutters didn’t cut as much as in past years, because it had been so warm the last couple of years,” he said.

This year, though, cool spells in October and downright cold weather in November brought a surge of business, Davis said.

“It started early,” he said, “and then there was that threat of an ice storm just before Thanksgiving. And then we had the big ice storm.”

Demand normally slows down after the holidays, though. Davis said the lull will give him a chance to bolster his supply — “unless you get something strong like ice and snow.” Then he’d have to start over again.

Personal Touch Tree Service has already replenished its supply a couple of times, Thurman said, and now asks customers “to take a half and half — half green and half seasoned” wood so its stock lasts as long as possible.

“We usually have a whole lot of wood — we’re a tree service,” she said. “We had a lot of wood, and we quit taking as much [from other tree services] as we normally do.